Tips for Supercharging Your Instagram Marketing
By Corey Walker, TheMarketingSpecialist.com
Have you been considering using Instagram to market your business, but aren’t sure exactly where to start? Or maybe you’ve been using it for years, but aren’t seeing the growth you’re looking for?
With over 1 billion users, Instagram is an excellent place to get more awareness and sales for your business. And, it’s no longer just a teen app, the average age is skewing higher and higher by the year, toward more people that will BUY.
Let’s walk through a few steps to get your account in shape.
The Profile
If you are using your account for a business, your profile should be set to Professional or Creator so you can access Insights, create ads, and have contact buttons. By doing this, your profile will also be public, which is a must for anyone in business.
Your professional or creator profile consists of your:
Username
Name
Profile Photo
Bio
Website
Business Address (optional)
Contact buttons
When choosing your username and name of the account, use words that are easily recognizable and searchable as your business. Try not to add in hyphens, periods, or underlines unless that is the only way that name is available.
For your profile photo, if your business is you, for instance a fitness coach, a headshot is much more enticing than a logo. People are generally more attracted to the sight of another human’s face vs. a logo. Use this same photo across all of your business social media accounts so there is cohesion between all of your accounts.
Your bio should be written with your target audience in mind. Write your bio to appeal to your audience, thinking about what they might be searching for.
Instagram only allows two links – the one here in your bio section, and a new link sticker for stories. None of your regular posts can directly link anywhere unless they are paid ads. Using an app like LinkTree helps you to get more mileage out of that one link. With LinkTree, you can create a landing page with multiple links allowing you to direct people to multiple areas of your website, podcast appearances, blog posts, you name it!
The business address and contact buttons are optional depending on how you run your business. If you work from home, you likely won’t want to add an address. For the contact button, choose the best way for potential customers to get in touch with you.
What Types of Content Should I Post?
Instagram’s capabilities have grown tremendously over the past several years. What started as a photo-sharing app has morphed into a video/multiplatform machine! If you are still posting only photos or graphics, it’s time to step things up with some of Instagram’s other popular areas.
Stories
Instagram stories were created about five years ago when Instagram was looking for a way for people to create more casual content. Since the clips are only 15 seconds long, and disappear within 24 hours, stories are meant to be on-the-fly, and less curated than the main feed posts. Stories can be video or photos/graphics.
Stories allow you to share a quick slice of life into what you are doing that day, and can also be used to re-share the posts on your feed. Incorporating stories into your content is an excellent complement to your regular feed. Don’t forget to add a location sticker to be added to that location in search. You can now also link out directly to a website using the link sticker. Stories have a variety of other fun add-ons to make your story more fun and engaging.
Reels
Reels are the newest big feature to be added to Instagram. If you are familiar with TikTok, reels are very similar. You can create 15, 30, or 60-second short-form video reels, but the shorter ones tend to perform better. The beauty of reels are their reach. Instagram is pushing hard to beat TikTok in the short-form video war, so reels are the highest form of content in the algorithm and are shown to many of your non-followers. It is the number #1 way to get more organic reach right now.
IG Live
Going live on Instagram is best if you want to directly engage your audience in real-time. People will often go live with more than one person to maximize the number of users that might view the live. Choose a highly interesting topic to your audience (maybe something you’ve been getting a lot of DMs or emails about) and allow them to comment live so you can interact with them. You can also check your insights to see the time of day that’s most active for your audience. Choose the time of day that works best for you and your followers.
Instagram TV (formerly IGTV)
Instagram’s previous long-form video add-on, IGTV, is no longer available, but never fear, they have introduced Instagram TV. Instagram TV allows you to post videos up to 60 minutes in length to your regular feed. This is a good opportunity to re-purpose those YouTube videos if you are active there! Remember, people have short attention spans, so if you plan to use the full 60 minutes, the topic needs to be juicy, entertaining, or chock full of important information.
Engagement is Key
Creative and informative content is wonderful, but an important tip you can’t skip is engaging with your audience. Make sure to stick around after you post to answer questions or gracefully accept compliments. It makes a world of difference to your audience to be acknowledged!
